LONDON: Palestinians being treated in one of Gaza’s few remaining hospitals are dying from their wounds because they are so malnourished, a British doctor working in the territory said.
Professor Nick Maynard, a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon, who is on his third stint volunteering in the territory since the war started, said he is seeing unprecedented levels of severe malnutrition.
“The malnutrition I’m seeing here is indescribably bad. It’s much, much worse now than a year ago,” Maynard, who is based at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, said.
UNICEF chief Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that acute malnutrition among children in Gaza had almost tripled after Israel imposed an 11-week blockade on food aid to the territory in March.
Maynard said malnutrition levels were directly contributing to preventable deaths among patients receiving surgery. He said those injured in Israel’s military attacks were dying because being malnourished prevents proper healing.
“The repairs that we carry out fall to pieces; patients get terrible infections and they die,” Maynard, who is volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians, said. “I have had so many patients die because they can’t get enough food to recover, it’s distressing to see that and know that it is preventable and treatable.”
Maynard said babies in Nasser’s neonatal unit have been particularly affected, with four recent infant deaths blamed on malnutrition.
The surgeon said he had been reduced to tears by the state of the children he has seen.
“I saw a seven-month-old who looked like a newborn,” Maynard said. “The expression ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do it justice. We have almost no liquid or intravenous feeds — children are being given essentially 10 percent sugar water, which is not proper nutritional support.”
Maynard said he had even seen the effects of malnutrition in his Palestinian colleagues, who were barely recognizable from when he had worked with them a year ago. He said many had lost 20-30kg due to the food shortages.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza lead to widespread warnings that the territory could descend into a state of famine.
Surgeon Nick Maynard is on his third visit to Gaza since the war started. He said the levels of severe malnutrition are unprecedented. (MAP)
In her briefing to the security council, UNICEF’s Russell said that of the more than 113,000 children screened for malnutrition in June, almost 6,000 were found to be acutely malnourished — an 180 percent increase in acute malnutrition cases compared to February.
“Children in Gaza are enduring catastrophic living conditions, including severe food insecurity and malnutrition,” she said.
Maynard, who is usually based at Oxford University Hospital, has been traveling to volunteer in Gaza with MAP for more than 10 years.
While on his current posting, he has witnessed the daily arrival of Palestinians who have been shot while trying to access food aid through distribution hubs set up by the new Israeli- and US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
“We have hundreds of trauma casualties coming in every day, it’s relentless,” he said. “This is not only from Israeli military airstrikes and attacks, but we are also treating multiple gunshot wounds every day.
“These are mainly from the militarized distribution points, where starving civilians are going to try and get food but then report getting targeted by Israeli soldiers or quadcopters.”
The surgeon said he had mostly been operating on boys aged 12 or 13 who had been sent to the aid hubs to get food for their families.
“A 12-year-old boy I was operating on died from his injuries on the operating table — he had been shot through the chest.”
Maynard called on the international community to force Israel to allow the full flow of food and aid into Gaza, and to end the “collective punishment” of the territory’s population.
“The enforced malnutrition and attacks on civilians we are witnessing will kill many more thousands of people if not stopped,” he said.
